Response to Christian Wiman's "Every Riven Thing"
As we move through Holy Week and into Eastertide, according to the church calendar, Jesus is about to be riven.1 Appearing to Thomas and others bearing his scars, we know from gospel accounts and other portions of the New Testament that he is even now the man who is riven. He sits on the throne eternally as one with deep-cut scars. While we sit in this season of mixed emotions, I have a few resurrection poems I’d like to share. I may respond to them briefly. Here is the first from the contemporary American poet Christian Wiman.
“Every Riven Thing” by Christian Wiman
God goes, belonging to every
riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why.
God goes. Belonging to every
riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the man who sit aloe
trying to will himself into a stillness where
God goes belonging. To every
riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself;
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every
riven thing. He’s made the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go,
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every
riven thing he’s made.
Christian Wiman has been riven and beaten battling cancer for nearly two decades. In this poem we hear his elegantly worded struggle with the whys and with the lack of satisfying answers. He questions in the midst of God’s absence and marvels at the nearness.
The repetition of the opening pair of lines keeps the poem moving in a familiar way, yet the slight change in punctuation alters the meaning and forces the reader to pause and pay attention to the import of the changes.
The poem drifts from the particular (“stone and tree and sky.”) to the ethereal (“A part of what man knows/ apart from what man knows.”) This word “belonging” stands out as central to each stanza. Creation and humanity are not God, but neither are they completely irrelevant nor detached from God. For “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.”
From God “cutting a covenant” with Abraham and walking between the cleft pieces of doves (Genesis 15) to the lashed and pierced body of Jesus as he was lowered from the cross, God has made himself vulnerable through love. God has crafted our mutual belonging because he was willing to be riven with us.
If you wish, read the poem aloud once more, pausing at the commas and periods to notice how the poem progressively changes.
riven: a literary or archaic term for split, broken, or cracked open